What's the Matter with Oklahoma?

BROKEN ARROW, OK. –- Talk about adding insult to injury. A vandal or vandals chemically defaced the seventh green at Cedar Ridge Country Club last night. In addition, a concession tent was torched. The damage, minor as it is, comes after the club lost 300 trees and had 2,000 more damaged by an ice storm that hit Tulsa last December. Cedar Ridge, site of the 1983 U.S. Women’s Open, looks uncharacteristically scruffy for this week’s SemGroup Championship.

Nature, in this case, deserves most of the blame. But what is it that drives Tulsans to burn graffiti into their turfgrass? Nine years ago, a disgruntled member of the greenkeeping staff chemically sprayed swastikas and profanities on the fairways and greens of Southern Hills Country Club. That assault, which cost $2.9 million to repair, has been described as the most expensive act of golf vandalism in history.

The attack on Cedar Ridge pales in comparison, but you have to wonder what point, if any, the vandals were trying to make. The scorched concession tent, near the eleventh green, was dealing chips and soft drinks, not drugs.

Maybe the answer is on the sign attached to the undamaged side of the tent: JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT – PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE ECONOMICS OF LIFE.